By 4,000 B.C. climatic and environmental
conditions across most of Canada were similar to the present time. Sea
levels approached their current positions and remnants of the glaciers
were limited to the High Arctic and alpine settings. Forests west of
Hudson Bay extended further north but cooler and wetter climate after
2,000 B.C. forced the tree line as much as 300 km south of its
present location. Geographical stability favoured the survival of
increasing numbers of archaeological sites.

The map is intended to act as a
simplified, geographical guide to the distribution of Period III
cultures.

(Adapted, but with considerable modifications, from Plate 7 of the
Historical Atlas of Canada, Volume I, From the Beginning to
1800. R. Cole Harris, editor, and Geoffrey J. Matthews,
cartographer/designer. University of Toronto Press,
1987. Drawing by Mr.
David W. Laverie.)

In most areas the process of cultural regionalization continued
apace. The most dramatic single human accomplishment of the period
was the colonization of the High Arctic and Greenland by Early
Palaeo-Eskimo culture beginning around 2,500 B.C. This migration
constituted the last human occupation of a major geographical
region in the world exclusive of the settling of Oceania.
Elements of Early Palaeo-Eskimo culture would eventually reach
northern Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Québec, the Labrador
coast and the northshore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence as well as
the Island of Newfoundland. In these more southerly regions
culture contacts would have been made with a number of different
Indian cultures. Less dramatic population movements were
represented by the Middle Maritime culture expansion to the
north coast of Labrador and onto the Island of Newfoundland and
the Middle Shield culture occupation of the increasingly
habitable regions of the Canadian Shield, penetrating to the
Labrador coast and the northshore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence
by 2,000 B.C.

There was an increase in the communal hunting of bison and the
production of pemmican on the Plains while in the Southern Plateau
by 2,500 B.C. semi-subterranean pit house villages were being
established at favourable salmon fishing locales. Early Northwest
Coast culture settlements became increasingly sedentary with
villages being characterized by large shell middens. Towards
the close of Period III along the west coast the first indications
of the development of socially ranked societies can be detected.
Elaboration of mortuary ritualism is apparent across the entire
country. Shortly before the close of Period III the bow and arrow
technology appears for the first time. This technology was
apparently introduced from Asia by Early Palaeo-Eskimo culture
and diffused, via the High Arctic, down the Labrador coast to the
St. Lawrence River and into the eastern Canadian Shield and,
thence, westward.